


until your love is alive and kicking

by freloux



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Light Angst, Reunion Sex, Romance, Sloppy Seconds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 15:17:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7392742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freloux/pseuds/freloux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like two planets whose orbits will always somehow align.</p><p>(Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/7194170">the long way around</a>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	until your love is alive and kicking

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Inthelittledoctor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inthelittledoctor/gifts).



> You requested a sequel to "the long way around" so here it is. <3

Clara returns to the diner full of an unsettling mix of gratitude, confusion, and disappointment. She wants to tell Ashildr all of this, confide in someone so she doesn't have to carry it alone (she certainly couldn't talk to the Doctor about it.) But Ashildr seems to have a standing policy of Not Getting Involved. When Clara starts to explain, share what happened, Ashildr just backs away with her hands up and fumbles out an excuse before hurrying away.

So Clara decides to explore the new planet they've landed on by herself, not entirely sure where she's going but needing to clear her head. No waitress uniform this time because she's starting to feel that it's time to abandon that and leave behind what it represents. Instead she pulls an old dress out of the back of her closet. It's not until she's put it on and checked in the mirror that she realises it's the same dress she wore on the train. She would take it off but there are good memories there still, even if they're mixed in with the pain. A reminder that there's always time for one last hoorah.

Before she leaves, Clara flips the sign on the door to closed and leaves, walking out into the night. The planet they're parked on right now is constantly raining. Kind of like London. What a dump, Clara thinks, and despite her melancholy, she smiles to herself, remembering. The rain falling makes the air damp but also somehow full of promise. An indication of the oncoming storm. Clara walks aimlessly, distracting hopeful thoughts running through her mind. She and Ashildr might be on a new planet now but some things stay the same no matter where in the galaxy you are: there's an old pub just down the road. Clara walks towards it feeling a bit better - a bar might be just the thing she needs right now. A couple of drinks to take her mind off this jumbled feeling she's got: so sad because of how he's so close to her, and yet so far away. The bar is one of those dismal little places that feels slightly claustrophobic: dark panelling with low lighting and the oppressive smell of beer. She sits down and orders a martini, shaking off the rain.

She glances around and starts, almost dropping her purse. Because there he is, at the other end of the bar, doing shots of hypervodka alone. Her skin prickles because it's like they're two planets whose orbits will always somehow align. The angle of his body is so familiar, even if they're not in the place they usually meet up at. Really, she'd know him anywhere, even if he doesn't know her. She's still dripping his come, even though their last time together was a few hours ago - although with the time loop, it may be more than that. He gave her so much that each successive pulse seems to force another glob out of her and onto her already come-thick underwear. It's a shivery kind of sensation, and that combined with seeing him again in a different place gives her this bizarre feeling like she's just walked into a room that she used to know but where all the furniture has been moved in her absence. She misses him, misses this.

He's got a tuxedo on but it's rumpled now, bowtie abandoned somewhere, and the way he looks - sort of withdrawn and considering - reminds her of the train, too. And she knows that he remembers that, and her voice, but not her presence, her part in it. (But that in itself is a start. Something to work with.)

So she wanders down to his end of the bar, drink in her hand, and makes up a casual line, something about how he's probably got stories to tell if he's trying to chase them away with that much alcohol. He laughs - a hollow, bitter sound - and gets a faraway look in his eyes. She's got to be careful because she doesn't want to scare him away, but the desire to get him back is stronger. "Tell me about the Orient Express," Clara says. (She doesn't say "again.") And she sits down next to him, noticing how he registers surprise at how she would know about that.

He does tell her, though, including the same details and speaking in the same cadence that he did before when he walked into her diner like something out of an old Western. Sketching out the few things he remembers, like the memory of her voice. But it's the same way he always talks about her, even if he can't remember everything, and Clara loves that: the warmth and tenderness that imbues his voice. Then that sad faraway look again. "I can't seem to find her, though." But she can tell he's really trying. _I would absolutely know._

Clara touches his face, then, in a gesture that startles them both. He takes her hand away - _no touching, I am against the touching_ \- and jumps to the next subject like some kind of reset button, starting to talk about this girl he's been seeing. She doesn't say "I already know." Instead Clara just sits and listens, drinking her martini slowly.

The Doctor fills in what specifics he has, what he's starting to remember. Putting together the girl he knows with his memories of the train. He goes back to talking about the mummy until he mentions the shrub planet and she finishes his sentence. Which is when he glances up at her from where he's been staring at the little sad line of shot glasses. "How did you know?" he asks.

"It's me, Doctor. The girl. From the train. From the blue robot planet." Clara takes his hand, wanting so desperately to get him to remember her, to know who she is. She can feel his psychic touch as it reaches out carefully, sifting through her own memories. Trying to match them to his. And it clicks, then, like fitting tracing paper over a lightbox. "Clara," he says softly, and hearing him say her name is a gift in itself.

 _I would absolutely know._ Searching her face. His look is no longer removed and sad. Instead it's now a slow unfolding expression of recognition, everything coming back in fits and starts. I would absolutely know. And now he does. "I missed you," he says quietly, looking back down at the shot glasses. He tries to describe what his life was like without her, how aimless he felt - even more than usual, given his itinerant lifestyle.

Clara wants to kiss him, then, so she does, putting her martini down so she can lean over and get better access. He kisses her back, hesitant at first but then with more intent. It's still not close enough, there's the bar in the way. So they end up kissing just outside, rain coming down like something out of a movie. Clara pressed up against him feeling breathless, almost like a teenager. Leaning up to accept each of his kisses and give her own back. The briefest of pauses when he takes her hand and she knows this part, too, the running back to the TARDIS - though this time it's for a much better reason than, say, an alien chasing after them.

If her heart could still beat, this would be the moment where it would break: blue wooden box, worn and familiar, as familiar as the way the Doctor is leading her inside, continuing to hold her hand as he does so. He hasn't redecorated. There are round things still on the walls and the colour scheme is unchanged. It feels like home here - always has, always will. The path to his room, another path she knows so well: wandering past room after room whose various purposes she could never quite figure out. An interlude where they kick off their shoes and then they sit on his bed, Clara nestled on his lap, her arms wrapped tight around him. Clara loves kissing, she always has, but she especially loves kissing the Doctor. His hands cupping her face, stroking her as if to relearn what she feels like. She opens her mouth and lets his tongue slide against hers in the tenderest of hellos. Undressing him, each step broken up by kisses. Taking off his jacket, undoing the buttons of his dress shirt. It makes him feel even closer to her. His chest is now pressed against the fabric of her dress and she can feel his hearts throbbing, a rhythm and sound she had missed almost more than anything else just because of how soothing the beat is.

She bears down on him a little, finding him firm underneath his trousers, and he groans softly. Pulls away just enough to feel up under her dress. skimming along her thighs and finally reaches her underwear. Soft, marvelling, kissing her over and over - "You're - so - wet -" Clara kisses his neck, his lips, and murmurs, "The last time we were together you gave me something." Or at least she thinks that's what she says - her words might have gotten all swallowed just because it's a bit hard to concentrate as he drags the fabric against her clit.

He's so quiet and sincere when he says "I want to give that to you again." Clara moans a little. He's tender when he takes her clothes off: slipping the straps of her dress off her shoulders, kissing her breasts, pulling both dress and underwear off. Gentle when he lays her down on the bed - his bed, her home. She watches him undo his belt and take off his pants before lying down next to her. Clara gets caught up in anticipation as she opens her thighs, inviting him in. He pushes slowly (too slowly) inside her, everything so wet between them. Pulling her into a kiss, silencing her startled little cry when he's all the way inside her. Knowing her again, learning her again. She holds her thighs tight against him, now, just to keep him close.

He's making love to her and this, too, is slow and tender. Moving inside her with long and deliberate strokes, as if to tell her with each thrust how much he loves her, how much he missed her. She rises up, lifting her hips to meet and match his thrusts - her own response that confirms just how much she missed him, too. Clara sighs, a contented sound. Content with how good this feels, how right. They just fit together. No more bad timing. Clara keeps her eyes open and looks up at him because she doesn't ever want to forget this, what he looks like. He returns her gaze and it's almost like the way he looked at her when they said goodbye: a watery smile that conveys such love and longing.

She's getting all wound up now but wants to make this last for as long as possible. Then she's closer and closer and before she loses this feeling, she says, "I want - " Clara shivers, moaning again. "I want us to come together." His movements become more urgent, then, and he kisses her, asking against her neck if this is ok. Clara isn't sure whether she should laugh or cry, because it's more than ok. In fact, it feels like the most ok thing she's done in a long, long time. In the end she does both, body shuddering and overwhelmed with the tangle of emotions she's got right now. It crests into this thing that builds and recedes, builds and recedes, until her own come slips out of her to make room for him, making it feel wet and intimate here in this bed. Some kind of indication of his duty of care with how he fills her up.

It's exactly what Clara needed and it makes her call out his name in response, so grateful to be returning home at last.


End file.
